ManicDDaily

Egg Head?

Yesterday I posted a villanelle mistaking an egg for a light bulb.   I was thinking about that today on the subway and came up with this poem.  Perhaps, I should say, draft poem.   Any suggestions are most welcome.

An Egg is not a Light Bulb

An egg is not a light bulb.
An apple is not an orange.
A square peg does not fit
into a round hole.

Actually, an apple is a lot closer
to an orange or even
to a round hole
than an egg
to a light bulb.

Though an egg can
have a certain luminescence.
In a pitch black room, for example,
an egg would be better than nothing
(especially if hard-boiled).

Except that a hard-boiled egg
has a blank crustiness
about its shell, like rough
plaster, or better,
gesso stuck insistently
to what would otherwise be
a relenting stretch of raw canvas,
while an uncooked egg, be it white
or brown (truly a dim peach),
has the iridescence of a pearl,
a tear, a newly-hatched idea,
which is represented (typically)
by a light bulb hovering
just above, or even inside,
a human head.

So maybe, thinks the head,
this thing called life
is possible.

This entry was posted on October 27, 2010 at 9:18 pm and is filed under poetry, Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: difference between eggs and light bulbs, drawing of egg idea, Karin Gustafson poems, manicddaily, ManicDdaily drawing, mixing apples and oranges, poem about connections between things, poem about eggs and light bulbs and difficulty living, poetry, square peg in round hole